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Terrafugia CEO Responds To "Flying Car" Criticism
waderoush writes "The majority of the comments on last week's Slashdot post It's Not a Flying Car — It's A Drivable Airplane were critical, even dismissive, of Terrafugia's work to build a two-passenger airplane with folding wings that's also certified for highway driving. We boiled down these criticisms to the dozen most commonly expressed points, and today we've published responses from Terrafugia CEO Carl Dietrich. While hybrid airplane-automobiles are an old (some would say laughable) idea, Dietrich argues that current materials and avionics technologies finally make the concept feasible."
Welcome to Slashdot.
Mod my comments down. It'll be fun.
1. A "drivable airplane" makes sense. In the way that you do not have to pay for hangar space and keep it safe and cozy at home. You just store it at home. You just "drive" the vehicle to the airport, put it together, do your pre-check inspection, fly, do your post-check inspection, fold, drive to destination. It's not the "Jetson's" concept, you have to be a licensed pilot, but it's, in a sense, practical enough for use.
2. Terrfugia's CEO state that the materials are not available to make it practical. I certainly hope so. Folding, flying, driving it's going to put a lot of stress to a lot of parts on the vehicle. Flying or driving is bad enough to cause problems to components, combining both in one vehicle it's going to make matters worst. I sincerely wish them luck.
Vi havas e-poston.
It's unthinkable that a story posted on /. should ever receive anything but careful, reasoned analysis. This story implies that most /. commenters are knee-jerk hypercritical dorks who don't read anything or like anything. Some people.
we will end no whine before its time
Maybe he's not interested in "solving real problems" but making a fun toy. If you want to "advance society" knock yourself out but don't try to force everyone else to do things your way.
The same thing was said about the automobile, the telephone, etc. etc.
The poor generally can't afford any sort of cutting edge research.
We (the masses) can benefit from the wastefulness of the rich and the advances in technology their decadent lifestyle demands.
(Cars were for the rich initially. As were TVs. As were computers. As were LCD watches. etc., etc.)
On fuel efficiency: their quoted estimate of 27.5mpg in the air would place it ahead of 95+% of cars on the road today in getting from point A to point B, since there's rarely an optimal, straight-line, traffic free highway between where you are and where you want to be. (Yes, you would have to have airports at each end, but general aviation airports are amazingly common.)
As for the rich part...well, nobody is claiming otherwise.
while I didn't read the original article, the slashdot concerns made for an interesting and relevant interview... I say good job slashdot
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
Unpossible!
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
Did you do some aerospace engineering?
Composite design?
Impact resistant deformable bumpers that are aerodynamic?
I can imagine you grunting that same thing to the guy inventing the wheel, instead of sharpening a pointed stick like you think he should be doing.
The moment that flying cars become available, I will start a business selling reinforced roofs.
molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
That's really all that matters. It doesn't take any money and hardly any skill to make a nice animation of an airplane with folding wings, but to actually build one and fly it, that's entirely different.
I'm looking forward to the performance of the flying prototype. I wish them good luck on making it and flying it to Oshkosh this year. If they make it to Oshkosh even without meeting all of their planned specs I expect them to make money for years since this really does fit a niche that no other vehicle does. While they'll have plenty of revenue, hopefully they'll be profitable too.
Great response from Xconomy. The need for an aircraft that can be used for limited driving is real. Some GA (general aviation) airports have very limited and/or very expensive hangar space. In fact, some airports have no available hangar space, in part because companies lease hangar space and use it for business operations rather than aircraft storage. In CA a few years ago, small aircraft were forced out of a hangar so it could be leased to a company that used it for business operations. That's still not right, but at least with the ability to park their airplanes at home and drive to the airport, small aircraft pilots still have options. At the other end, if you're traveling point-to-point, the ability to skip car rental and use your airplane might be an option as well. Obviously, a driveable airplane would be designed for short-distance driving. It's not a car replacement by any stretch of the imagination. (Yes, I am a certificated pilot.)
I welcome the rich pensioners that bought Mercedes cars with airbags in the 80's, so that development by Mercedes could be financed and now you get life-saving airbag in even the smallest cars.
I welcome the yuppies that bought the first aluminum bikes, costing probably several thousand dollars back then, but now anyone can have a bike that is light and doesn't rust.
I welcome the showoffs that wanted a mobile phone in the early 90s, so now wireless technology is cheap enough to be used in third world countries, and get people connected.
Should I go on? Advances, especially in materials, are often sustainable because of some marginal hobbies of rich people. They want the lightest and strongest, even when it is actually not needed for their cause (do fishing rods really need to be made out of carbon-fiber?). But the amount of money that they want to invest can keep small innovative companies alive. In the end, we all win.
molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
From http://www.audiouk.com/vintage/telephone.htm
From http://www.evancarmichael.com/Famous-Entrepreneurs/559/Lesson-1-Stick-With-It.html
Next clueless AC response?
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
The U. S. has collapsed economically ...
... and Slashdot covers flying cars.
I'm sorry, but you're confusing what you want with the actual state of affairs. Why you want it to be that way is a little mysterious, but your ability to confuse it with reality suggests just the sort of disconnect that might drive you to want to see a failed economy, the better to justify your world view.
I'll have to check, but I assume you make the same exact complaint when Slashdot talks about new video boards, hair-splitting differences between Linux distros, the space program, squabbles over pirated movies and music, 4D rubik's cubes, what China does with web filtering, sailing robots, and whether or not Google is obscuring people's faces in Street View? Nah, I won't check, because I'm sure you did.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Really, we used to - this has been some time ago - have new front page posts about a particularly popular topic and have some of the most insightful comments, often from differing views, rehashed as a starting point for a far more interesting comments thread than the original story's (with dozens of trolls, flamebaits, ill-informed comments, etc. often based on just the title or summary).
In fact, the section is still there. So is the link. Welcome to BackSlash: http://backslash.slashdot.org/
But where the heck did it go? Did the 'editors' realize that "whew boy, this sure is hard work!"? I never found any information on why it seems to have suddenly just stopped dead.
Maybe I missed a comment from an 'editor' somewhere in an unrelated thread, perhaps it's under some catch-all in the FAQ (it's not listed as a section in the "What are the sections for?" item).
What I do know is: I miss it.
Now to see if I'll get a +5 Off-topic..
No one thought there was a problem building a living room car that every one can afford. Many people still do not. To many people, the living room car is a reasonable and necessary item. Many even invest in tricking out their living room car with full entertainment centers. The benefits are clear. So much time is spent in a car, wouldn't it be great to have all the comforts of a living room. A beer, a tv, a phone. Room to spread out, get conformable, even made engage in intimate relations. And there is little to show that this is a bad thing. The drive is more conformable. Oil prices are up, which is good thing unless one is stupid enough to live in an oil poor region. General safety is up, unless one is stupid enough to drive a car that is not a living room.
Reading through the summary and responses there seems to be this same air of uncertainty that existed when the auto manufacturers were using a loophole in a law so that farmers could continue to farm to provide cheap inefficient cars to the masses. There is nothing particularly wrong with it. There is no reason why a person who can afford it should not have a aircar, or a land yacht, or anything else they think they need to be happy. However, such things do have long term effect on the human condition. Speaking personally, there are already severe safety issues on my street dealing with land yachts that they streets are too narrow to accommodate, especially at the speeds that these drivers like to travel. I can imagine somebody buying one of these, and trying to land. At the very least, i would expect a lawsuit demanding that we cut down the trees and pave the front yards to accommodate such planes. And don't laugh. Similar lawsuits have been filed as people wish to reclaim overgrown land for their big houses and big cars.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
There was that design of two propellers turning in opposite directions with opposed angles, so as to create a blowing air column that takes the "flying saucer" off the ground.
Two words. Gas mileage. Show me any verticle fan craft, carrying 4 adults, that gets anywhere near the gas mileage of any normal car on the road.
Using engine power to hold the craft up is the antithesis of obtaining reasonable mileage.
Now add a gyroscope to that and a second safety thing and a third, so it's impossible to get it upside-down
Hand-waving those hard parts away doesn't make it any easier.
For any type of non-airport ops, we need 6" precision in a heavy crosswind. Why 6"? That's what you do in your car in a parking lot. Not getting upside down is only part of the problem. You have to come down sometime.
Maintenance. A LOT of cars on the road are spectacularly badly maintained. Do you want those same clowns flying overhead, ready to break down?
as a pilot, i love the idea of being able to fly into a tiny strip by the beach and then drive the few miles to the nearby town. what i want to know is what stops someone from landing on a country road somewhere and then folding up their plane and saying 'oh no officer, i drove here'? there are plenty of roads that are landable around.
I'd like to take the opportunity to thank Carl for his well thought-out response. It's not every day that busy entrepreneurial CEOs take time out of their schedules to address the unwashed internet masses.
I think this project has a lot of potential. I'm always surprised at the attitude people have that "well, I wouldn't buy it, therefore it's not a good product." News flash, folks: there are market segments you are not a part of. Just because not everyone would buy something doesn't mean no one will. Judging from the number of preorders this has gotten (and knowing many general aviation pilots who would leap at an opportunity to own something like this), I would say it has been very well received.
And he's right about the timing. While carbon fiber technology has existed for a long time now, it is just now gaining traction in general-purpose manufacturing, and the economies of scale are bringing the price down to the point where products can be built with it for roughly the same cost as some other materials. The convergence of affordable composite manufacturing and a new type of sport-plane license have finally made this type of vehicle possible.
The licensing programs for general aviation are much more strict than they are for automobiles. If this vehicle inspires regular car drivers to get their VFR licenses, I suspect the training will also make them better drivers.
However, I don't envy the cost of Terrafugia's product certification program. This vehicle needs to be certified to both FAA and NHTSA standards, which aircraft and automobile companies spend many millions on separately, just for the paperwork alone. Godspeed to the certification team!
For security, the MD5 hash of this message and sig is 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0.
REally? The RICH like to tout that their home automation systems save energy. I am a Crestron programmer, I design, install and program the most expensive systems for the upper rich. My sales force use the bullshit line that it saves energy and all the other crap. In reality it does not. The soft start (2 second fade on or off) that the rich people so adore and the underlying technology is 100% incompatible with efficient lighting systems. CFL lamps do not work in a Crestron,Vantage or lutron systems (No X10 and the crap you buy at "smarthome" is NOT home automation.) Most of the modules/switches, if it's a retrofit, consume 12-15 watts in the off state EACH! A typical small 3400 sq foot summer cottage (Yes that is small to these people) that has automation will have a $100.00 a month electric bill with everything turned off and set for the "away for the winter" mode. To these people $4.00 a gallon gas is not even a issue worth talking about. The current 10,000 SQ foot home we are finishing has 3 200amp electric services coming into the main home to meet it's needs. I am controlling 11,000 watts of lighting. Yes LIGHTING not equipment but just the freaking lights and every one of those will have a good old 60-80Watt tungsten element light bulb. My equipment racks will use 15 of the 20 amps it is given 24/7.
Energy is incredibly dirt cheap to the rich. They dont want hybrids, they want a sexy exclusive car with 1000hp. (Bugatti Veryon) They want a comfortable estate with expanses of elegant green grass that takes a ton of water to keep green. and they burn more electricity in their home than what 10 homes use.
Energy or transportation efficiency does not come from the toys of the rich. These innovations come from scientists, entrepreneurs, and yes some of the rich that want to give back to society by financing grand and foreward ideas. Like the New york subway, Space Ship 1, etc....
Done even think that the rich are playing with high efficiency items and they will trickle down. They dont. They play with their exclusive devices and then sometimes finance efficient things.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
You've got it wrong. This flying car ain't nothing. THIS is a REAL energy-wasting toy for the rich. $1 million, 5.8 mpg city, and 250 mph top speed? The fact that it even exists is a sin (but you have to admit, it is beautiful).
RE the flying car, it's actually much more reasonable than most other private planes, for which the Transition's $150k price tag is really bargain-basement (for a new plane). A new Cessna 172 is around $250k. And this particular model has a number of money-saving features compared to other light-sport aircraft; specifically, it runs on ordinary super-unleaded gas, it should get ~27 mpg while in the air, and most importantly, it doesn't need to be hangared, which can cost upwards of $500/month in some airports.
If they can pull off the engineering, I could see these guys having a good, stable business selling a couple hundred planes a year (which is about what other LSA manufacturers do). If they hit their price point, there will be good demand.
Dudes: If it flies it requires FAA certification. You may return to your crack pipes now.
If you had read the fine article you'd have seen that there were two major components to the answer for "Why now when it has always before been infeasible?":
1) New materials make it technically feasible.
2) New FAA regulations, creating a new class of aircraft (Light Sport) that's drastically easier to certify, makes it bureaucratically feasible.
I believe 2) completely answers your objection.
But thank you for playing.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Moller claims to get about 18 mpg on ethanol with his M400 volantor, despite it's seemingly fuel-hungry 8 engines. I think he's cheating, though, since he's only actually built a 2-passenger model, and he hasn't flown it off the tether yet, let alone FAA-certified production models.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
The article mentions walk around inspections. He talks these up and I've heard other pilots do this too. I'm sure it is a good thing to do, if you fly infrequently. If you're flying much more often and that really is the point of this vehicle, to get pilots flying more, then a visual inspection is just "eyeballing" .. you're going to get complacent and miss things. With today's technology is there really any need? Even light planes can have a sensor array network with computer analysis of the sensor data giving a green light to fly or not. Aircraft is so behind the times in this way. Even the big commercial operators get by with people visually inspecting the plane.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I think he's cheating because he's never flown the thing 18 miles to prove it, much less at 350 miles per hour for a full tank of fuel. The proposed fuel economy means nothing if there isn't even a demo model which can demonstrate the actual profile is feasible.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
The US economy grew at .6% (annualized) the last two quarters, amidst a massive spike in oil prices, and food prices, and a financial service sector meltdown, and new-home-building doldrum, and assorted other minor panic. Unemployment remains about 5%, inflation (via the CPI) just .3%. If anything, this testifies to the strength of the rest of the US economy. My local Ph.D. economist opines, "If anything, the government should stop stepping on the gas."
Invest in America. It's underpriced.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
You believe the CPI?? *points and laughs*
If video games influenced behavior the Pac Man generation would be eating pills and running away from their problems.
I believe that as oil is a global commodity, if item #3 is true, that would be a cause of item #1 for folks living in the U.S.
Well I'm here how do you propose to develop an aircraft that can't descend to fast or doesn't flip over in midair? Because if you have a solution I'm sure just about every aircraft manufacturer in the world would be prepared to offer you anything you want for it.
I may agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to face the consequences of saying it.
You put in a ballistic parachute. They're common among experimental aircraft enthusiasts.
They're not practical for commercial airliners due to square/cube problems however economies of scale make other enhancements more practical in that regime.
And.. Oh, Terrafugia's design does call for one. Big surprise there. IOW, unless your regularly inspected and certified safety system fails, you're not going to die from poor maintenance in other areas, although if it's anything like skydiving, you might just lose your license for a period if negligence is the reason for parachute deployment.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
You may as well be complaining about the cost of diamonds and moaning that since a hard working Amercian can only afford a few three foot diamonds these days the economy is clearly collapsing.
most people would be happy to trade cars, just they don't have the cash to
Heh, right. Lots of $1000 cars will get 35MPG, your ego just refuses to be seen in them -- you want the trendy status symbol Prius. The same way you refuse to live within 100 miles of where you work, and then complain about gas prices, as though they're the problem.
I'd love to see $8/gallon gas. I spend about $20/month on gas, even on my small income doubling that is a non-issue.
Cars themselves are luxury items, of course, and you're perfectly capable of living in a city and using public transit like most of the world.
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Wow... talk about negative.
first off, there are plenty of solutions to the "energy crisis". What type of make believe fiticious crap world are we living in where if economics force us to change it's the End Of The World.
1. Solution #1 - switch to an alternate form of energy. There are a ton of options. The last time I checked the sun was still shining and we can still get power from it. Be it solar, wind, or nuclear, there are a ton of options. Why don't we do this? Because the economics don't say we should. Oil is still cheap, but The *second* oil becomes too expensive, there will be a ton of alternate energy sources available to tap. The only reason we don't do it is becuase oil is STILL too cheap.
2. We can also *gasp* change the way we live. Shit, I know i waste plenty of energy. Heating air conditioning... hot water in the mornings, driving to work, pure wastage. How can I get away with wasting energy? Simple, it's cheap. it's less than 5% of my total income so I don't give a crap. I pay roughly 6x that on mortgage. Before the world falls apart, I'm sure we can adjust the way we live at least a tiny bit. But OMG, you may have to sell you SUV and buy a geo metro. Truely the end of the world.
BTW, I'd love to see soemthing backing up that statement about you needing more energy to create a solar panel than all the energy you will ever get out of it. Smells like slanted anti-alternative-energy BS to me, but if you got it from another article or source I'd be interested hearing their twisted logic OR I could even learn something and find out I'm wrong, but i highly doubt it on this issue. Perhaps you're thinking of Ethonal. Either way, source please.
The mortgage crisis.. I guess I don't give a shit. There aren't any losers here. You have gready companies who sold a lot of mortgages when times were good never considering that things may turn south because that might impact their current earnings portfolio. If some of them go belly up its no big shakes to me. I frankly think a few of them SHOULD be put out of business becuase if there was anyone in this mess who was at fault, it was them.
Then you have greedy homeowners who took crazy ass loans or "no paperwork required" loans. Look, buying a house is easily the single biggest investment of your life. If you don't run a few numbers through excel and say "does this make sense" then I don't really feel a lot of pity for you when you can't afford your house. It most likely means you overbought when you got the house (which most people do). But now you've lost your gamble so you have to declare bankruptcy and have to wait 7 years before you buy another house. It's not the end of the world. It sucks, but you took a gamble because housing prices were going up and up and everybody but you was getting rich but you... and now the bubble's burst.
The US is a strong country and we can survive all of these things. The world is not coming to an end. The sky is not falling.
Thank you, but I'll save my pity for a bunch of children who died when their school's clasped after the earthquake in China or other people who actually deserve it.
don
all language nazi's will burne in heil!
Photovoltaics are still messy, but solar-thermal plants are entirely doable, both technologically and economically. The trouble is, as you said, that the "powers that be" apparently have zero serious interest in replacing coal plants with anything different.
Over the years I've noticed a growing disconnect between US leaders and citizenry. I'm tempted to opine that your "leaders" simply don't give a damn; the US really needs to give the Old Guard the boot at the next election, on both sides of your weird two-party-one-horse government. I remember when your dollar was worth two of ours - now it's heading the other way around.
Prove me wrong on this.
Since you asked...
1: There is absolutely -ZERO- events causing the gas and oil spikes...
We're AT WAR in the MIDDLE EAST. War means chaos. Chaos means production becomes unsteady. Unsteady production means LOWER SUPPLY.
Also...
CHINA and INDIA are ENTERING THE MODERN AGE. That means they want cars, and power plants, and other things that burn oil. Half the world starting to do what Americans have done for a century means INCREASED DEMAND.
You know what happens when you LOWER SUPPLY or INCREASE DEMAND? Yep. Prices go up. And this isn't even mentioning Peak Oil.
2: Congress is absolutely powerless to do anything to stop it,
The price of oil? Pretty much. Congress also can't stop hurricanes. What's your point?
the current administration just plain doesn't care about the American people in any way.
Actually, they do. Every single elected offical in Washington cares deeply about their country--the Republicans just think we're better off if they leave us to fend for ourselves, even if some of us starve. (Are you starving?)
Even if Congress try to do something, how can they pay for it? Sell war bonds to China? The US is bankrupt.
The US is FAR from bankrupt. China's only where they are in the world because we're allowing them to grossly distort the currency exchange, because we want them to work for peanuts. Push comes to shove, we can just sue in the WTO and slap a Tarrif on investments and production from China.
3: The dollar is rapidly losing ground against every single currency in the world. The only reason that the dollar buys what it does is because people believe in it... and people are not anymore.
Odd. I still get paid in dollars, and they purchase enough goods for me to go back to work tomorrow.
The dollar won't be the uber-currency of the 21st century. Good. Hegemony is boring, and Americans suck in a boring world.
4: There are no solutions to the energy crisis. Nuclear plants are not going to be built anytime soon, nuclear fusion is a joke to keep tokamaks funded, even though there have been -zero- advances in fusion since the laser was invented. Solar is a joke because it costs more to make a solar panel than what energy it ever gets through its useful life. Wind, geothermal, are only useful in rare areas. Pretty much, the US lives and dies on coal and oil... and cars don't burn coal.
"no solutions": I suppose you're right. We'll never go back to $1 a gallon gasoline. Shucks. But we knew this was coming twenty years ago.
Nuclear: Plans are on the tables, Greenpeace's founder is endorsing Nuclear... sorry, there will be new plants built or chartered by the next Presidential Election. Maybe before this one.
Fusion: I won't even dignify this with more than "you're wrong."
Solar: Ok, in small batches, for small device use, in the northeast, a photovotalic cell takes more energy to create than it will produce in its lifetime. But (1) they get significantly cheaper with larger batches and technology improvements, (2) they last longer in larger installations, and with increased tech, which increases their total energy output, (3) in some places (deserts) they pay-off in less than five years already, (4) photovotalic isn't the only means of solar power. Reflected-light to melt salt or boil water works pretty damn well.
Wind: Wind blows everywhere, some places essentially constantly. Couple a wind farm with a flywheel, and you can produce pretty damn good power. Essentially anywhere in the United States. Not eveywhere, but hardly "rare" for any meaningful definitions of that word.
It's Economics, stupid: Let me put this a little bit more clearly. Wind, Geothermal, Wave, Solar, and Nuclear lose out to oil and coal for electricity generation because the latter are so god damn cheap.
And, thanks for pointing that other one out, I thank the people who bought the first expensive cars with anti-lock brakes (again, not used the first time by Mercedes, but still greatly improved by them and Bosch, so that not only the driver with amazing driving "skillz" like you can brake safely, but also the unexperienced driver behind him (!) so that that one wont crash into the driver who knew who to stop safely. You're not the only one on the road, you know.
molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
Moller claims to get about 18 mpg on ethanol with his M400 volantor
Moller also claims to have a functional 'flying car'.
Sadly, that's not on the front page; unless you have a custom front page that always shows backslash articles... from August 2006 :\
Well done! You'd be surprised how many Americans can't seem to figure that out. They are particularly, oddly enough, often the Democrats who are bemoaning Bush in every way but can't see that spending money we don't have is causing lots of the problems.
BTW, our Congress is 49% Democract, 49% Republican, 2% independents who tend to vote Democrat. Our House of Representatives is 56% Democrat. Guess what body of the government passed the budgets according to the President's whims? Yep, the Democrat-controlled Congress, which has an even lower satisfaction rating (16%-22% by many sources) than Bush.
Many of us in the US have been pushing for the minor parties to gain ground on the Democrat/Republican duopoly, since they're pretty much working together towards mostly common goals while appearing to be at one another's throats.
all those are the direct result of sh@tty republican reign over white house, in which they didnt do scat to regulate the filthy credit business, tried to reduce dependence on arab oil, and printed money like a banana republic. all those will change, when new administration takes over
So, since you know so much about this, you can explain in more detail. Please do explain how such tighter regulation was in place when a Democrat administration was in office for the previous eight years. Ah, I see.
While you're at it, please explain how the person in the executive office can cause the legislative actions in the congress and the senate that would be necessary to do what you're talking about. Perhaps you can cite the Democrats (who have been running both houses for a while now) who - since they have the majority, and can control what legislation is brought to votes - had a firm grasp on how regulation would have prevented people from borrowing more money than they could pay back, and put forth legislation that would have prevented it. Then point to the calander date during which the Democrats mustered a vote on that subject, being in charge of the legislative agenda as they are, and then sent such legislation to the president you hate so much, where he vetoed it - since that's the mechanism by which he would have prevented such regulation. No, really, please pass along those details... I'm having trouble finding any sign of them, or finding any sign of the actions that The Wise Bill Clinton took to address that issue, but which The Evil Bush tore down.
So, thanks in advance for providing that information. Oh, and please also, if you would, explain how a new administration will suddenly have new constitutional authority to regulate banking and real estate in a way that doesn't have to start with the congress. I'm intrigued, since neither candidate is asserting such new powers, though you're convinced they will have them.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
The US is in an ongoing state of economic collapse. Unemployment is at levels unseen since the depression in many places.
We are at the very minimum in a recession. And as the housing market continues to go in the toilet, which some believe will continue at the least until the baby boomer die-off reaches its crescendo in 2025, there will be more defaults on mortgages, and dropping property values - leading to dropping property taxes. This will increase municipal debt at a time in which the federal debt has reached, frankly, truly unfathomable proportions.
We didn't escape from the "Great Depression" until the end of WWII, due largely to economic sanctions placed on Germany and Japan. But you can't squeeze blood from a turnip...
Where is the money supposed to come from?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
My (limited) understanding is that the problem is actually with the dollar no longer being tied to the gold standard, but to the petroleum standard.
Currencies are worth what they're backed by. The value of petroleum is based on pure market manipulation and bullshit. Consequently, our economy is all manipulation and bullshit.
I am not an economist, so hopefully someone else can come along and regulate and explain more, or explain why I'm off my rocker, or whatever.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Incidentally, the total energy cost over the lifetime of a Prius has to be at LEAST twice what it is on a TDI Golf - and that's even less if you run your Golf on WVO or just biodiesel.
Cars themselves are luxury items, of course, and you're perfectly capable of living in a city and using public transit like most of the world.Here's where I part company with you. Public transit doesn't work in the US like it does in the rest of the world. The only (well, statistically, the only) places that actually have working public transportation systems are major cities and in most cases that's not true either. I lived in SF and I could drive to work AND FIND PARKING in fifteen minutes, but it took a minimum of an hour and a half (assuming everything was on time and I made my connections, HA HA HA) to take the two buses and the light rail that represent the most rapid public transit between bernal heights and potrero hill.
In other words, even if you live in a major city, public transportation will probably fail you in the US.
This, however, is the result of deliberate actions taken on the part of the automotive companies; they bought bus and trolley lines and shut them down, and they lobbied for rail subsidies to be terminated in favor of the federal highway system. The federal government readily agreed, since it provided them with just one more form of leverage to apply against the states in their battle to severely curtail states' rights. Their attempts have been largely successful; for example, several states long avoided legalizing medical marijuana under the threat of their federal highway funds being terminated. This is all logical from the federal government's point of view, since marijuana was originally made illegal under the much-abused interstate commerce clause of the constitution, and that's the purpose of the highway system during peacetime.
Anyway, that's a slight digression, but if you can even afford to live in a city (I paid $800 for a ROOM in San Francisco, my landlord who was the manager of a toys R us turned out to be a tweaker... fun shit.) it doesn't necessarily follow that public transportation will do you any good. And before you suggest it, there is NO FUCKING WAY I would ride a bicycle. It's actually a health hazard to ride on the street not just because of the danger of some dipshit running you over, but because of all the exhaust you're sucking.
So I agree with your apparent assertion that (most?) hybrids are stupid (I think they make some sense when used as a taxi, and series hybrids make a LOT of sense) but I think the rest of what you have to say is pretty ridiculous.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
So, you're saying that even though the democrats have brought forth, or at least proposed MANY bills that were guaranteed a veto (and have even sent them FOR that veto), that they won't even PROPOSE a bill to address what the GP seems to think is entirely the administration's fault? He blames the credit "crisis" (though I don't think that "coming to your senses and no longer offering absurd loans to people that are going to be overextending themselves" counts as a "crisis") on the current administration, because he says that the current administration isn't controlling the banks or the borrowers enough. Happily, the executive branch doesn't have that sort of direct control over how banks and their customers operate. Those are legislative matters.
You're saying that there are all sorts of brilliant would-be regulations just waiting in the wings, about which their democrat authors aren't saying a peep, because it will make them look bad? As bad as spending weeks and millions of dollars holding hearings about steroid use by baseball players? As bad as not ejecting a fellow democrat from congress after $90,000 in cash bribe money is found in his freezer... and then putting him on the DHS oversight committee? How brilliant can this hidden legislation be if it can't even get a simple majority in the house they run to consider voting for it? Ah... perhaps that's because it doesn't exist, and the GP was blowing hot air out of ignorance about how such things work, and you're really stretching it to give him some cover. It's just silly.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
First, either you are lying or you are talking about the monetary cost of a solar system. It can take 10-30 years to pay off THAT cost, but that has nothing to do with the actual cost of producing the panel, and everything to do with supply and demand and artificially inflated prices.
You have to keep in mind that right now what we're doing with our national effort is making war. Far from being profitable (unless somehow it drives the price of petroleum in the proper direction to dramatically increase the value of the dollar - kind of doubt that one) this is actually putting us into huge debt. If we simply put that effort into producing PV solar, and instead of turning it into a pork processing system :) we just did everything at-cost, we could do this shit tomorrow. Or at least get started.
As the AC sibling comment to this one says, the very first hit on your search terms is Can Solar Cells Ever Recapture the Energy Invested in their Manufacture? and the answer is yes:
So in other words, they knew in 1977 (the linked short-paper was written twenty years later) that even at then-current (no pun intended) levels of efficiency that payoff was in under seven years. Today, with thin film panels, that should be substantially less.
If we promoted solar more, and produced more of it, then the prices would go down (if everyone and their mother made a grid-tie inverter it wouldn't cost you so damned much, for example) and then the economic payoff for the end user would come much sooner. Until then, solar is pretty much for the wealthy and those living off-grid.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Actually, they do. Every single elected offical in Washington cares deeply about their country
What?
This proves that you have no idea what you are talking about.
People who care about this country are not starting illegal wars, driving up the national debt, getting rich in the process, and then taking the money out of the country and doing further harm to our economy.
Are you paid to say this shit, or are you just brainwashed?
The US is FAR from bankrupt. China's only where they are in the world because we're allowing them to grossly distort the currency exchange, because we want them to work for peanuts.
The US's debt is truly astronomical. We're overdrawn on our credit as it is.
Nuclear: Plans are on the tables, Greenpeace's founder is endorsing Nuclear... sorry, there will be new plants built or chartered by the next Presidential Election. Maybe before this one.
Greenpeace's founder's opinion is not being echoed by Greenpeace. 9 out of 10 hippies I talk to (this is not scientific but I talk to a lot of hippies) just refuse to come around to the idea of nuclear with breeder reactors. Incidentally, if we don't use breeders then using nuclear is a HORRIBLE and TERRIBLE idea; we can gain a couple orders of magnitude in efficiency this way. With breeders, nuclear can be not just practical but also profitable without subsidies.
Solar: Ok, in small batches, for small device use, in the northeast, a photovotalic cell takes more energy to create than it will produce in its lifetime.
Who told you that? It COSTS MORE TO BUY than it will save you in its lifetime, but that is the result of market forces, not physics.
Think about it for a second; a solar system pays you off monetarily in about 20 years (yes, it's a long time) even without any special energy credits. Are you really saying that the power company charges me more for power (and I'm just talking about base rates here) than the sum of the amount that they charge the people who make the panels plus the amount that those people charge me for costs plus their profit? Obviously it's not impossible, but it is also not true . It takes less than seven years at 12 percent, which is a pretty reasonable estimate of the actual efficiency output (who cleans their panels enough?) when your panels are supposed to be around 14 or 15%. And that was for crystalline PV, not thin film, which requires less energy expenditure. It wouldn't seem so at first because of the petroleum-based nature of the plastics involved, but it is so hugely energy intensive to produce pure silicon that it winds up being that way anyway. They also cost less to ship due to their mass being a small fraction of a completed PV panel.
Wind: Wind blows everywhere, some places essentially constantly. Couple a wind farm with a flywheel, and you can produce pretty damn good power. Essentially anywhere in the United States. Not eveywhere, but hardly "rare" for any meaningful definitions of that word.
Wind has real problems; it truly HAS been a problem for flocks of migratory birds, but that is a lesser issue to the fact that those wind turbines are not especially inexpensive to produce, they do make a lot of noise (we are slowly waking up to the effects of noise pollution) so you don't want one in your backyard, and they MUST be placed up in the air so that they get wind in most cases. This keeps small-scale wind from being broadly useful, although it IS useful in some places.
Of course, when the conveyor shuts down, and the jet stream shuts down, the weather patterns we take for granted are pretty much all going to change...
5: The mortgage crisis is just the tip of the iceberg. Its only going to be a matter of time before banks start having to be bailed left
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"